Proposed is a car-body tilting system capable of tilting the posture of a carbody with respect to a bogie when a railcar travels through a curved line. As such car-body tilting mechanism of the railcar, there is an air spring type car-body tilting mechanism configured such that air springs are provided between the bogie and the carbody.
Generally, the air springs of the car-body tilting system are connected to a main tank (main reservoir) capable of storing compressed air (hereinafter referred to as “pressurized air”) supplied from a compressor mounted on the railcar, the compressor being provided as a drive power source for a brake of a car, a car door, and the like. When the railcar travels through a curved section, the air spring at an outer rail side and the main tank communicate with each other, and the pressurized air is introduced to the air spring at the outer rail side. When the railcar finishes traveling through the curved section, the communication between the air spring at the outer rail side and the main tank is cut off, and the compressed air in the air spring at the outer rail side is released to the atmosphere (hereinafter, the compressed air discharged from the air spring is referred to as “discharged pressurized air”). When a traveling line includes a large number of curved sections, supply and discharge of air to and from the left and right air springs are frequently performed. As a result, the pressure of the pressurized air in the main tank lowers, and this deteriorates operation responsiveness of the car-body tilting system.
To prevent such deterioration of the operation responsiveness of the car-body tilting system, proposed is a configuration in which: the discharged pressurized air discharged from the air springs is stored in an exhaust tank; and the discharged pressurized air is refluxed to the main tank (see PTL 1).